Coming Home
by RisqueSno
Summary: Newly released yet again from Arkham, Harley Quinn is urged to reconnect with the people she left behind nearly seven years ago. The possible start of a happy ending for a shattered woman, still struggling toward sanity.


Beta: Gladrial

Permission to Archive: Ask me first, tell me where it's going, and we'll see what we can do.

Rating: T (Vague references to past violence and some naughty words)

Summary: Newly released yet again from Arkham, Harley Quinn is urged to reconnect with the people she left behind nearly seven years ago. The possible start of a happy ending for a shattered woman, still struggling toward sanity...

Spoilers: Nothing outside of some vague references to "No Man's Land". In fact, I've no doubt this will eventually be rendered completely obsolete by ACTUAL information about Harley's family.

Disclaimer: DC owns all these characters and WB owns DC and Time Warner owns WB and I'm pretty sure the rest of the world. Also, I stole this disclaimer from Amanda. Additionally, I made no profit from writing this.

Author notes: Dedicated to snowy Thanksgivings, forgiveness, and all the mothers out there. Thanks to Wittyfae for letting me use Mina…again. Uh, differently.

* * *

It was a nice neighborhood, the kind that had been around for about a decade and not declined yet. The houses were mostly two stories, surrounded by pruned hedges and towering pine. There were three cars in the driveway, a pink tricycle with a little white basket on the front propped against the porch steps. A thick blanket of snow covered everything, but the front walk was freshly shoveled. She could hear the low din of murmured conversation, standing hesitantly at the welcome mat. The high chatter of little kids. A clatter as a spoon hit a plate, followed by a man's voice. Taking a deep breath she rang the doorbell; then quickly stuffed her hands back into the pockets of her black coat. It was new, like everything else she was wearing. The yap of a small dog heralded the chime.

It took a moment for the door to open, presumably to prevent the dog from rushing out. The face that stared back at her in silence was familiar, but far more lined then the last time she had looked upon it. The touch of gray at the temple had now completely taken over the chin-length bob. Her own blue eyes widened at her in shock.

Clearing her throat and pulling the coat around herself, Harley spoke, her cracking voice sounding less confidant than she had hoped. "Hi, Mom."

The older woman said nothing, one hand at her throat and the other grasping the door. Her neat french manicure digging into the white paint. Harley was suddenly afraid to say anything else, the intense mental prepping she had done during the drive over pointless; bravado melting off of her and onto the cement porch. Too late to run now.

"Mom, who is it?" Her sister appeared behind their mother, darker blonde hair layered around her face and a toddler on her hip, grabbing at the lace front of her blouse. The moment she saw Harley her eyes went cold and she immediately placed a hand on their mother's shoulder. "How dare you come here and do this," she snapped, the Jersey accent they all shared, the one Harley had fought to suppress during school, coming to the forefront.

Harley felt a frustrated anger creeping up on her and forced it down. "Hello Mina," she greeted the younger woman neutrally. "I'm not here to cause trouble, I just want to talk."

"Talk?" Mina repeated in a hissed voice. "You should have thought about that before you dragged us through hell. You didn't want anything to do with us once they locked you up the first time. You-"

"I understand if you're still upset," Harley said quickly, addressing her mother, "but please let me just come in for a second and talk. I…I just need to talk."

"You can't possibly think we're going to let you come in here on Thanksgiving and play your games," her sister said, hugging the little girl in her arms closer, as if Harley was about to snatch her away. The conversation in the living room down the hall from them had halted, and she wondered who else was over.

Their mother spoke then, with a slightly shaky voice. "Come into the kitchen." Mina stepped back with a scowl and disappeared into the living room. Harley stepped hesitantly into the foyer, taking in the polished wood floors and tasteful blue wallpaper that was so different from her mother's last home, the one she had grown up in, right outside of Gotham. The walls had been a cheery, tacky yellow and everything had screamed seventies, from the macramé plant holders to the shag carpeting. She felt like a stranger here. An unwanted one.

She followed her mother to the right, through the dining room, almost wanting to cry at the sight of the same good dishes from her past, laid out on the table. Bone white, trimmed in flaked silver. One of them she knew bore a tiny chip from when she had bumped it against the counter at nine, though she couldn't tell which it was.

The kitchen was light blue and subdued sunshine yellow, the white rabbit figurines of all shapes and sizes that her mother had so happily collected over the years sprinkled around the room. There were several pots on the stove and the oven was on. Three different types of pie were settled on the white-tiled counter by the breadbox. Her mother stopped at the sink and placed her hands on the edge, as if bracing herself. Harley spoke first. "I knew you would be home today. That's why I came."

Her mother paused before asking, "Did anyone come with you?"

She was saddened that her mother thought she would actually risk their safety by bringing anyone near them, Him, but understood that they just didn't know what to expect from her anymore. "No. I'm not around too many people lately. The medication, getting out again… it just takes awhile, sometimes."

The older woman had still not looked up from the sink. "How long has it been this time?"

Harley didn't know whether she was asking about criminal activity or being released, but chose the latter. "I've been out of Arkham for about seven weeks now. Joan, Doctor Leland, put me on something stronger as kind of a trial thing, but it's worked…" She trailed off into another uncomfortable silence, worrying at the zipper of her jacket and staring at the closed door to the living room. She could hear murmured adult voices and the chatter of children, oblivious to the events taking place. After six years, Harley was used to people talking about her like that, in low voices when she wasn't within earshot…or even when she was. It was worse when she saw. The knowing looks from the doctors when she was brought into Arkham, those significant glances between rogues when she ordered one drink after another before going back to Him, and the heroes, with their sympathetic head shakes and calm voices as her world got fuzzier.

She was so tired of pity.

But this wasn't much better. Anger, resentment, silence. She could only guess what Mina was saying about her in there to whoever was over. Making excuses or telling the truth, about the blood-related psychopathic murderer they had just let in. It would depend on the audience, she supposed. And here was her mother, finally looking her age at fifty-five, staring at the garbage disposal in her sink like it had just eaten one of her rabbit figurines. Harley had come to talk, good or bad, and Joan would be disappointed again if she didn't. Joan didn't need any more of that.

"Mom, I came to see you because I want you to know how sorry I am. About everything." She swallowed nervously as her mother gripped the sink a little tighter. "I know words mean nothing now, especially mine, but…I just needed to see you. To show you-"

"To show me what?" her mother snapped abruptly, spinning around. "That you're not killing people right now? You have no idea what we've been through while you've been off ruining your own life. We were actually worried to death about you after the earthquake, tried to find you in the transferred patients. You had disappeared, they said, and we thought you were dead and it killed us." She paused, gathering her breath, eyes shut tight for only a moment. "A year later, when the rebuilding started and we had news again, there was your name, our name, attached to murder and kidnapping and God knows what."

Harley winced as grotesquely clear memories of a cheese grater came to mind. She had seen No Man's Land as heaven then, despite the harsh living conditions, because it was just a never-ending blur of Him and blood and mayhem, no worrying about the law or the Bat. Everyone had bigger problems to deal with than unpredictable attacks of insanity that came and went faster than White Hats could arrive. She had been the lieutenant, the perfect playmate, and the exciting new addition. How quickly things get old.

"I'm sorry," Harley choked out, beginning to babble. "It was chaos and everything made sense then, and it only stopped being funny when Batman had me by the throat and hanging off the side of a building, and I didn't want to die, not like that. And, and, I knew after the press had my name that you would know about it all and I didn't want to drag you into it..."

"You did," responded her mother in a cold tone. "We had to move here, all of us. People knew us, knew you, and those damned authors and documentaries kept badgering about your childhood and signs of psychosis. Blaming me! I may not have been the best mother," she exclaimed in a higher voice, accent like a knife. "But I took care of my babies and I made sure you had everything you needed after your father, God rest his soul, passed on! You made your own choices. You threw everything away six years ago, as an adult, when you decided to do what you did."

"And I'm not defending any of it. It was my fault, all of it. I knew it was wrong getting involved with him, letting him out, but he…" Harley trailed off, trying desperately to put the jumbled flashes of _handspring-clown-scratch-laugh-fuck-darling-bullets_ into actual words. "He just DID something to me. For me. In my head. Every lie, every piece of hurt, it was love and it was goddamn hilarious." She shook her head. "I was sick, so sick, Mom. Arkham, Gotham, it DOES something to us. People like me; we don't stand a chance. But I made bad, horrible choices, and I would take every single one of them back now."

"But they happened and you can't. You wouldn't let us be there for you and you weren't there for us, when your uncle had cancer or when the bank almost took the house. Mina and Glen had a miscarriage four years ago. You weren't there for her then…or for Adam's birth seven years back, you were so busy with school. You've never even met Kristy-"

"That's why I came," she pleaded. "I need to make up for everything, to have something real to connect with. Nothing's worked," Harley sniffed, surprised by the sudden appearance of tears. "And it's because I slip up, I go back, and I just want a shot, please." She sobbed, choking, and leaned against the back counter with her face in her hands, whispering, "I don't wanna die for the joke, Mom."

She didn't expect anything by then. She'd fucked up everything too far, over too many years to really deserve any other outcome than what she'd had. Padded walls, smeared make-up, the cold feel of metal in her hand. Jumbled madness: that was Harley's life. Tiny bits of torn newspaper, lipstick smiley faces and laughter covering every inch, black and white and red all over. She was tired of red. And purple. She was tired of a lot of things.

So was her mother.

There they both were, two grown women, sitting in the middle of a neatly swept hardwood kitchen floor, weeping together so passionately that you would assume there had just been a death. Many deaths actually, but such circumstances were neither here nor there in Harley's mind as she buried her face into her mother's shoulder for the first time since childhood. She'd been the tough one, the good daughter, the more distant as adolescence faded away into college. Caught up in her own prospective future, unaware that she never really had one to look forward to. And she'd been broken into a zillion little pieces and put back together all wrong, by a madman with crazy glue and cheap paint, and her patches were all done with bubblegum that never, ever stuck.

Mascara ran, foundation dissolved, and legs were in incredibly uncomfortable positions, but neither let go. The older woman felt frail, breakable in a way Harley had never thought of. There was incoherent babble: "I love you", "I'm so sorry", "Not going back", "I missed you". And Harley, inhaling her mother's familiar scent from the soft blue sweater, felt like maybe this time she could really do it. No matter what she'd done or where she'd ended up…It turned out you could really come home again.


End file.
